The most recent Climate Analytics Report indicates that Australia is playing a major role in sustaining elevated global emissions, threatening the goals of the Paris Agreement. We have not set targets for the phase-out of fossil fuel exploration, production and export and we continue to approve new gas and coal developments. I express my dismay.
Many think it criminal because there are many thousands of preventable deaths caused by fossil fuels due to the ravages of climate change itself, from air pollution and from the direct action on humans by toxins in gas. All these effects are more prevalent in children.
We should be ashamed.
Australia is not the only sinner. Just five wealthy governments the new ‘petrostates’, Australia, Canada and Norway the UK and the US are responsible for 51% of planned expansion from new oil and gas fields through 2050 and are the biggest climate hypocrites in 2023.
Hypocrites because they proclaim their prowess in renewable energy as a distraction but it is doubtful if their output matches their 11.9bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions which will result over their lifetime from all current and upcoming oil and gas fields forecast to be licensed by the end of 2024.
Hypocrites because they never acknowledge any harms they cause to the population particularly children nor their disregard for the Paris agreement or other international climate commitments.
The chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is only 14% with a probability of warming 2-3 degrees by the end of the century. These are catastrophic heat levels for living creatures which will be boosted further by the five petrostates with a 90% chance of a 3.5% rise unless policies improve radically.
What does this say about our care for the future of the world’s children. They have no future under their assumed current ‘leadership’ of the rich democracies, particularly Australia, US and Canada. Why?
David Pocock’s Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023 sought to amend the Climate Change Act 2022 to require decision makers to consider the wellbeing of current and future children when making certain decisions that are likely to contribute to climate change, including decisions that will increase scope one, two or three emissions.
The two major Parties combined to defeat it. Government and Opposition failed to make a single suggestion to offer psychological support to the thousands of young people who supported the bill and the 402 citizens who made supporting submissions.
The Parties make the suggestion that rather than adopt the Pocock Bill, the UN Rights Committee 2023 procedures might be utilised.
However they have done nothing to date.
Pocock’s extensive dissenting report explained that the Bill would put the health and wellbeing of children and future generations where it belongs, at the forefront of decisions on large emitting projects.
Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), an independent organisation of medical doctors across Australia, gave evidence that children suffer 90 per cent of the burden of death and disability caused by climate change’ and ‘climate change is now the greatest threat to children’s health and wellbeing, and to future generations having a healthy and habitable planet’.
Within Australia we are neglecting the full panoply of measures needed to adapt to flood, fire, heat, hurricane and communication disruption, and once again children will be to the fore.
Pocock’s dissenting report also makes some crucial observations about our national readiness to cope with oncoming climate change disasters. He says “The short-sighted decision making of politicians has landed us in a multitude of crises—climate, biodiversity, housing, cost-of-living—that highlight the urgent need to embrace and implement longer term thinking and decision making”.
Indeed we need a united Australia if we are to stand together against the coming ravages. Salaries in the many millions for some, while adults and children live in poverty are not compatible with harmony and cooperation which will be needed.
Housing is a human right and under international law being adequately housed means secure tenure. This provides a sense of safety, emotional stability, improved physical and mental health and a better chance of employment. The impact on the health, wellbeing and education of children is enormous as are the savings from less use of medical and social services and provision of housing for workers in aged care and other vital services.
An obvious solution is manufacture of prefabricated (manufactured or modular) homes The factory construction, transport and erection are detailed in “A Brief History of Prefabs”, between 1945 and 1949, 157,000 prefab bungalows were built for families, couples and singles by a bankrupt, heavily destroyed country. Fortunately, today one state NSW is being wise enough to invest $10 million to explore and trial the use of modular housing to deliver social housing.
Every aspect of our children’s increasingly difficult lives must be on the table not least social media. We know that formative brains are changed irrevocably by its use, and it is responsible for a surge in mental health, loneliness and crises in body image as well as the delivery of miss- and disinformation. Many have become the addictive slaves feeding the whims and needs of powerful rich men. What is Parliament waiting for? Please take heed of Frances Haugen’s Facebook whistleblower statement that Australia is at risk of fumbling a “once-in-a-decade opportunity” to regulate social media.
Those accustomed to thinking and working in silos will ask why social media reform must be a part of climate adaptation? The answer lies in our Covid experience. An individual cannot have the liberty to flout regulations that must apply to all.
My submission to the Online Safety Act 2021 made the necessary points on vaccination to give security to all and pointed out the need for public health input. The time is now.
David Shearman is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University and previously held senior academic positions at Edinburgh University, where he qualified in Medicine and Biological Science, and at Yale University. He is author of many books on climate change and related issues. He has served on the IPCC, has been President of the Conservation Council of South Australia. With the late Professor Tony McMichael he founded Doctors for the Environment Australia in 2001. He is author and co-author of several hundred scientific and medical papers.
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